And thus, it ends. Despite a never-ending stream of doom and gloom from Oracle/Microsoft-funded 'pundits' regarding Google and Android (six hundred billion trillion gazillion eurodollars in damages!!1!), judge Alsup has just squashed all of Oracle's chances with a ruling that is good news for those of us who truly care about this wonderful industry: APIs are not copyrightable. Alsup: "To accept Oracle's claim would be to allow anyone to copyright one version of code to carry out a system of commands and thereby bar all others from writing their own different versions to carry out all or part of the same commands. No holding has ever endorsed such a sweeping proposition." Supreme Court, Ellison?

Indeed let us hope that the sanity of this ruling extends further. Some of the stupid short phrases that are being granted trade mark protection (Paris Hilton suing Hallmark cards over "that's hot") makes it hard to imagine how any media gets out the door to the public without paying for dozens of short, trite trademarked utterances.